Addresses by the right reverend Phillips Brooks eBook

It is one of the signs to me of how human words are
constantly becoming perverted that it surprises us
when we think of freedom as a condition in which a
man is called upon to do, and is enabled to do, the
duty that God has laid upon him. Duty has become
to us such a hard word, service has become to us a
word so full of the spirit of bondage, that it surprises
us at the first moment when we are called upon to realize
that it is in itself a word of freedom. And yet
we constantly are lowering the whole thought of our
being, we are bringing down the greatness and richness
of that with which we have to deal, until we recognize
that God does not call us to our fullest life simply
for ourselves. The spirit of selfishness is continually
creeping in. I think it may almost be said that
there has been no selfishness in the history of man
like that which has exhibited itself in man’s
religious life, showing itself in the way in which
man has seized upon spiritual privileges and rejoiced
in the good things that are to come to him in the
hereafter, because he had made himself the servant
of God. The whole subject of selfishness, and
the way in which it loses itself and finds itself again,
is a very interesting one, and I wish that we had
time to dwell upon it. It comes into a sort of
general law which we are recognizing everywhere—­the
way in which a man very often, in his pursuit of the
higher form of a condition in which he has been living,
seems to lose that condition for a little while and
only to reach it a little farther on. He seems
to be abandoned by that power only that he may meet
it by and by and enter more deeply into its heart
and come more completely into its service. So
it is, I think, with the self-devotion, consecration,
and self-forgetfulness in which men realize their
life. Very often in the lower stages of man’s
life he forgets himself, with a slightly emphasized
individual existence, not thinking very much of the
purpose of his life, till he easily forgets himself
among the things that are around him and forgets himself
simply because there is so little of himself for him
to forget; but do not you know perfectly well how very
often when a man’s life becomes intensified and
earnest, when he becomes completely possessed with
some great passion and desire, it seems for the time
to intensify his selfishness? It does intensify
his selfishness. He is thinking so much in regard
to himself that the thought of other persons and their
interests is shut out of his life. And so very
often when a man has set before him the great passion
of the divine life, when he is called by God to live
the life of God, and to enter into the rewards of
God, very often there seems to close around his life
a certain bondage of selfishness, and he who gave himself
freely to his fellow-men before now seems, by the very
intensity, eagerness, and earnestness with which his
mind is set upon the prize of the new life which is
presented to him—­it seems as if everything